Hector Martin

yeah i think I'll look into gentoo a bit more after i switch to days at work. definitely intrigued by gentoos package model.

Given the customizability I think it's *very* good. Having some issues is common-ish (especially on unstable with lots of packages) and you'll get used to poking the right knobs to fix them, but given the exponential number of build configs that's an amazing track record.

The dependency model is ridiculously powerful. It has to be, to support all the options. Which is why Portage is pretty slow to resolve dependencies (again, especially once you have as much junk as I do) but it does amazing things these days.

Things like "oh, this library got bumped to an ABI-incompatible version so I need to recompile all dependent packages" or "I have two options for a package and a new package depends on the other one that isn't installed, so I'll just go ahead and swap it out".

sounds like a fun excersize actually, lol

I mean it does those things on its own. Sometimes it gets tied up in a knot though, there *are* situations it can't handle, and that's when it gets tricky to figure out "what's the one package I need to uninstall/rebuild to unjam this".

Circular dependencies are another usual one. You can't actually install a fully functional desktop system with certain features globally enabled in one go. Rarely happens on clean installs (since you tend to enable things progressively), but if you clone configs it does.

You have to disable the feature first, install some package, then enable it and reinstall (which breaks the circular chain). No real way around that (though it could be handled automatically but isn't right now).